An overdose of Games fever

By EUGENE BINGHAM

So, this is it. This is what the seven years of preparation, hoop-la, foul-ups and facelifts were for. The Olympics have hit home in Sydney. In one sense, the Olympics are about numbers: 10,200 athletes striving to be No 1, each with an eye on their own favourite figure - from 9.79s, the 100m world record, or on 7920m, the long road and tracks for the endurance phase of equestrian's three-day event.

But there is one thing that comes with the Olympics for which there is no known measure: buzz.

Sydney has it in world-record amounts.

This city has a bad dose of Olympic fever. It is the sort of affliction that made several dozen grown men and women sleep out on the streets of Darling Harbour for a freezing mid-winter night just so they could be first to buy a tiny Olympic pin in the morning.

The fever's symptoms were even evident in the pay negotiations of major workforces in the city where unions demanded special Olympic bonuses. Train drivers, guards and signallers all won 12 per cent pay rises on top of a $A5.50 an hour Olympic allowance; postal and telephone staff also wanted Games specials.

Of all Australians, though, the media has been infected the worst. Newspapers, television and radio stations are totally consumed by it, filling their pages and bulletins with everything you ever wanted to know and a lot you could not care less about.

There is no doubt that because of this media mania Sydney 2000 has already claimed its fair share of victims. Journalists have jumped at any sniff of controversy.

And boy, the organising body, known as SOCOG, has done its fair share of reaching for the hanky.
The slip-ups have just kept coming: the medals with their classically wrong design - Roman ruins instead of Greek; revelations that sports-crazy Australians never had a show of claiming prime seats unless they were VIPs; and the botched delivery of what tickets ordinary folks actually could manage to get their hands on.

Then there was Kevin Gosper, Australia's International Olympic Committee head honcho who was badly burnt over his daft decision to allow his daughter to be the first Ocker to clutch that precious Olympic torch.

Celebrities associated with the Games have been fair game. Just ask television stars Tracey Holmes and Stan Grant, two presenters who were supposed to feature in the Seven Network's coverage until revelations of their affair hit the tabloids.

Holmes was dumped from her role as one of the channel's key Olympic presenters. Her face had to be wiped off 2500 advertisements on the sides of buses after the papers' relentless campaign (she was dubbed a Holme Wrecker.) Grant, portrayed as a family man, was also dropped from his role.

Around Sydney, the only feeling more evident than the hype is the outbreak of sheer patriotism.

If 400m runner Cathy Freeman and swim sensation Ian Thorpe appear on any more billboards or posters around Sydney there will be a serious danger that visitors will assume that the pair are Communist dictators, not athletes.
You would think they had already won gold. God help them if they don't.

Not that the Aussies would admit that there is a chance in hell that their stars will not shine at their Games.
And who could blame them for their confidence.